To the Editor:
One myth of Conservative budget-making is that Stephen Harper doesn't increase your taxes. But in fact, he does - payroll taxes, small business taxes, credit union taxes, tariff taxes, etc. He has increased the net federal tax burden in each of his last four budgets.
This year alone, Mr. Harper's new tax hikes will add up to more than a billion extra dollars to be extracted from Canadians every year on-going.
Another Conservative budget myth is that all their slashing of federal programs has no impact on frontline services. According to Mr. Harper, only some remote, faceless bureaucracy "in the back office" in Ottawa is affected. But that too is false.
Here are just a few examples that hit and hurt my home province of Saskatchewan:
In Canada's most trade-oriented province, international trade offices are closed.
In a province with a growing population, access to immigration services has been severely curtailed - the office in Regina is closed.
RCMP training at Depot Academy in Regina has been cut back. The forensic crime lab will soon shut-down.
Food inspection certificates for exporting livestock are harder to access.
Community-based internet sites are gone.
National Parks and Historic Sites (like the Motherwell Homestead, for example) have been downgraded.
PFRA (the world's best source of knowledge and engineering about soil and water conservation) has been destroyed. Precious community pastures are being sold-off and some ploughed under. The historic Tree Farm at Indian Head is being terminated and its assets junked like a fire-sale.
Curiosity-based public sector research in agriculture and other fields has been cut-back.
The "Communities of Tomorrow" incubation centre for innovative municipal infrastructure has been closed.
The Royal United Services Institute, which has been serving military support needs in Regina since 1919, is being evicted from its modest but historic premises.
The Joint Emergency Preparedness Program, which helped all municipalities plan for sudden local disasters, has been killed.
On and on it goes. Canadians "on the frontline" are impacted every day. These cuts are not driven by fiscal necessity. They're entirely ideological. A bit like his "Tea Party" cousins on the extreme right-wing of the U.S. Republican Party, Mr. Harper is obsessed with diminishing the federal role as much as possible - even including cuts to healthcare and old-age security.
Ralph Goodale, Mp,, Wascana, Sk.
